John Baldessari
If your idea of a classic Conceptual artist is that of a dire iconoclast, this retrospective of John Baldessari from 1988-1999 might have proved you wrong. Nothing in his work suggests a mistrust about the seductive power of images. On the contrary, Baldessari seems to propose that a critical analysis of the visual does not preclude an affirmative position towards it - and that quite possibly the best qualification for challenging images is that you enjoy them.
Telephone (for Kafka) (1991) is a good example. The centre image shows a kidney-shaped cut-out that appears to have been taken from some cheap soft-porn gangster-flick: a hunk sits in a pool, sporting a golden necklace, wristwatch and ring, busy talking on his mobile, while in the background an ageing blonde exhibits her silicone breasts in a skimpy bathing costume. The foreground is dominated by a cocktail (complete with pink flamingo) and a pair of extremely kinky sunglasses. Due to the picture's fragmented shape, most of the woman's head has been severed, whereas the man's eyes are covered by a (typically Baldessarian) yellow dot, as if they've been censored. Around this image, a spacious rectangular frame is drawn directly onto the wall. In the lower right hand corner of the frame, a man stares wildly to the side, his eyes wide open. He's on the phone as well, albeit in a different feature - a Kafkaesque film noir perhaps.
In a way, Telephone (for Kafka) could be about the dynamics of vision. First of all, Baldessari blots out the one element of the image that looks back on the viewer: the eyes of the hunk. After the gaze has been displaced, it wanders around in the image, finding temporary rest in details - the silicone breasts, the sunglasses as surrogate eyes - and finally re-emerging in the wild stare of the Kafka stand-in in the second picture, only to be referred to the invisible source of horror outside the image. The gaze is always elusive, a Lacanian beholder might solemnly conclude. Or maybe not - the piece might simply be a joke about an appalled Kafka turning away screaming from his TV.
The 'Elbow Series' (1999) works with a similar, shrieking balance of three elements. One ink-jet canvas displays a photo of an exotic plant. On a second, the name of an animal is spelled in white letters on black ground: Yak, Auk, Emu (three-letter animals only). The third renders a Goya-detail, a woman looking up in a visionary moment, while another casts her eyes down piously. Again, the arrangement seems to work as a meditation on different modes of perception. Clearly, information is made to be deciphered: a name, a photo, animal classification - all of which is confronted by Goya's religious ecstasies. The ecstatic versus the functional? But perhaps it's not that simple. Maybe you know what a Yak is, but what's an Auk? And although the photographs are taken in a factual way, the plants radiate an aura of exotic beauty - even the functional allows for a sense of wonder. Maybe the Goya quotation should be understood not as part of lofty considerations about the gaze but as part of the simple puzzle: what do Goya, an Emu and a cactus have in common?
You could say Baldessari's work of the last ten years doesn't convey the same sense of urgency as his earlier work. The menacing undercurrent of violence has given way to something more playful, reminiscent of Matisse or Hans Arp. It's as if he's telling his audience to relax and forget about Conceptual art coming up with a definitive statement, or, as Kosuth would have it, making one piece which proves once and for all that vision is determined by semiological constants. Instead he seems to be emphasising how important it is to find a simple method for looking at images: a technique that might open up a small but irreconcilable gap between what you see and what it might mean, a gap that might allow for the interplay of proximity and distance, a way of consuming and criticising images at the same time. A method that suggests art is easy. You can try this at home. Why not watch TV the Baldessari way?
